Amid a surge in tech hiring, the valley's unemployment level dropped in April to its lowest point in more than two years, the state reported Friday.

Santa Clara County's unemployment rate reached 9.9 percent, the first time it's been below double digits since February 2009, when the impact of the credit crunch was cutting deeply into the valley's tech sector.

San Mateo County's unemployment rate dropped to 8.2 percent in April from 8.4 percent in March, the California Employment Development Department reported Friday, the third lowest in the state.

"It's gone from companies having their pick of candidates to candidates saying 'Where do I want to work,' " said Heather Martin of Robert Half International, an employment service company.

Between March and April, the valley's nonfarm employment grew by 2,600 jobs, the EDD said. In the past 21 years, the region has averaged a loss of 600 jobs in the same period.

Manufacturing posted a net gain of 1,100 jobs, partly in semiconductor and computer-and-peripheral equipment hiring in the month.

California gained 8,900 jobs and its unemployment rate dropped to 11.9 percent, the first time it has been under 12 percent since August 2009.

"I'm just overwhelmed with the number of openings I have," said Robert Greene of GreeneSearch, a recruiter of technical talent for valley companies. Startups are getting more funding and they're competing with companies like Google, Groupon and Facebook for engineers, he said.

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"The supply doesn't meet the demand in the valley, and I'm starting to look outside of the state," Greene said.

Computer engineers who can build Web applications, run cloud-based systems and work with open-source technologies are especially coveted, said Joe Cheung, director of recruiting at Yammer, a business social networking company.

"Right now there are huge spikes in the need for engineering talent," he said.

Other sectors are benefiting from the frenzy in tech hiring.

Construction added 1,000 jobs last month, and the finance sector is coming to life.

"If you are specialized in information technology or accounting and finance, you are going to have a lot easier time coming into the job market again or just coming out of college," Martin said.

Stephen Levy of the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy predicted that restaurants, retail and other sectors eventually will also benefit.

"It's going to move beyond recovery to growth,'' he said.

And it should get even better in the next few months, judging from recent real estate deals involving some of the valley's biggest companies -- Google's expansion and Facebook's planned moved to Menlo Park are prime examples -- along with a continuing rivalry for hires between social media and Internet search and portal companies.

Where the jobs are

In the San Jose metro area, the information sector that includes Internet search and Web portals has added 5,600 jobs in the past 12 months, a 13 percent gain.

"I think this is probably the biggest high-tech skills rush that we've seen since about 2000-01," said Tony Rems of Thought-Matrix, a San Francisco Web design and development company. "It's still in the early stage and is not there yet, but it is definitely going in that direction."

Manufacturing added 4,900 jobs in the past year, mostly in computers and electronics products, which has gained 3,200 jobs in the past year, a gain of nearly 8 percent.

Ann Miura-Ko of Floodgate, a Palo Alto venture fund, is also a lecturer in high-tech entrepreneurship at Stanford University. She said the competition for strong employees isn't just among established companies anymore because it's so easy with today's technology to launch a startup.

"My college students at Stanford are starting businesses on their credit cards. "... Any person who's pretty technical can start up their own company,'' she said.

In San Mateo County, there have been five straight months of annual declines in unemployment.

The region that covers Santa Clara and San Benito counties has added 13,400 jobs in the past 12 months, a 1.6 percent increase, the EDD reported.

Still a long way to go

But there is a long way to go. With 866,600 jobs -- excluding agriculture -- the San Jose metro area has 49,000 fewer jobs than it did in April 2008, before the credit crunch. There were 90,300 people actively looking for work, and thousands more underemployed.

Construction is up only 500 jobs from a year ago. The leisure and hospitality sector saw a sharp drop of 1,800 jobs from a month ago, largely in places that serve food and drink. The sector is 2,700 jobs short of what it had in April 2010.

And government jobs have been hard hit the past year. Employment in the public sector, especially in local government, has slid by 3,300 jobs in a year.